Saturday, April 7, 2012

Assignment Journal - Inspiration Assignment Three

WARNING: VERY long!!

Alright.. thank you Rexy for this awesome idea! Here is my thought process etc for making my inspiration entry.. I hope I took pics of everything I did xD

So I watched the assignment which was an awesome video.. that I do not have access to thanks to the Offcials being turd-tastic. I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do right away, but I knew there were thousands of ways to go with it, so I wasn't too worried. I had some family stuff happen, but the next day (I thinK I was driving to my dad's house) I just sorta knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to have my model bloodied up, dirty etc on the ground, with pebbles and rocks around her. The camera would be level with her and looking up a little to those who had stoned her: children. I didn't know the setting yet or if I wanted the kids to be like.. super clean innocent church going like kids or evil. (Sorry Eden! I'm always like.. making you bloody and dirty for assignments lol).

So finally when I'm able to get in game and mess around with it, I take Eden to CAS. Thank you Poida for your lovely blood spatter patterns and blood spatter accessories.. Because I can't edit xD

I also added one kid in my family just to mess aroudn with looks... And first we had this:

Innocent, sweet, church going whatev but then the eyes... holy banana balls the eyes! Awesome little creepy touch. I had originally planned on making my own pose, but I decided just to look through my poselist first. I also considered having eden in that pose when the sim is dying and reaching up.. but idk... only get one chance and i have to throw another eden into the lot every time i screw up D: ANyway I found this.. and although it's meant to be sexy I thought it could totally work and save me some time:

Then I realized what I wanted to do with my set (first attempt lol). I wanted to have her in front of a church, maybe at a bit of an angle so you could see a cemetary to the side. It would be just an old little church building, old distressed wood siding, etc. So while in game I'm going back and forth from live/camera mode to build mode, adding and building:

I wanted to use some of the realistic rock/stone/masonry whatever patterns for the foundation.
Also, whenever I have windows on a building in a shot, even if the building is just a shell, i make sure to make a lil room and at least have some light and a color or wallpaper on the wall in case you can se through, that way its not just a bare gray wall.

Again, looking at the angle I'll be looking at Eden, and how much of the church I'll see. I decided to add some greenery to the church for details, eye candy whatev. BTW just a note, I HATE EA flowers.

I also start adding some bloody rocks and such and work on ideas for posing the little ones.
But then comes a dilemma. I'd actually prefer the shot to be during the day, but of course hate outdoor lighting. I can't just draw a wall around the lot and put the walls down since there is a building that needs to be in the shot. I try multiple things, even try to draw walls around the whole set to get lighting and think I can draw my own sky in over a fense, however the foundation keeps this horrible blue tint and I just decide I don't really like how it all looks anyway so I scrap that idea for the setting.
BTW here is the closest to decent lighting I get, but seriously what's up with the steps?!?!:

I also realize that the lighting mod I've installed doesn't work in Twinbrook, so I start a new town (sunset) and move her in with a ton of little brats. I pose her, and begin thinking about what I want to see in my set.

Then I decide since we're not going for this holier than thou Church scene, I want to have evil black and white kids, that either look like ghosts or vamps or something weird:

I edit all the kiddies in CAS and begin adding details to the set, again moving around my model and switching between camera/tab mode and build/buy mode:

once I finally get the set and camera angle where i want, I wait till its close to sunset and start getting the kiddies doing whatever they need, whether its throwing a little baseball or looping the Lucky (CAS) trait idle xD

you might notice some of the set is actually a *tad* different than my actual shot. I was messing with lighting again and trying to draw walls around crap and accidentally deleted crap without being able to undo so i had to rebuild xD

Anyway forgot to take a pic of this, but I put an invisible light in front of the kiddies and a lamp in front of my model. It's actually not the outdoor spotlight, its a CC table lamp from somewhere that works pretty much like the spotlight but the light seems to go a little further. I also changed the color of all lights to flame.

(BTW, used the awesome bloody pattern on most of the rocks as well)

Here is my final in game shot before editing:

Then I took it to gimp, did a little crop/dodge/burn and took one of the ground rocks and cloned it a couple times to make it look like a couple of the boys were tossing one up in the air or at my model. Also closed her eyes: